“You said that you have been sent by God so that I may achieve a victory against…
what did you call them? Ah, yes, the ‘devils from beyond the narrow seas.’ ”
“Sire,” Joan said, and Charles’ heart soared at the title. He was “sire,” wasn’t he, if his grandfather lay impotent in an English dungeon?
“Sire,” Joan said, “if I tell you things so secret that you and God are alone privy to them, will you believe that I am sent by God?”
“Assuredly,” said Charles, leaning even further forward, his face flushed.
“Continue.” “Do you remember,” Joan said, “that on the night of the Feast of Saint Maurice, just a week past now, you sat in the chapel of the Louvre and prayed to God?”
“Aye, I remember,” Charles said, and turned to his sister. “Catherine, I was there!
You remember … you had to run to the chapel to fetch me so that we could flee!”
Catherine said nothing, and Charles turned his attention back to Joan.
“Yes?” he said.
“You prayed to God that if you were indeed bastard-bred then He should take the realm from you.”
Charles sat back in the chair, pale and trembling. “It is true,” he whispered. “That is what I prayed.”
“Then I am here to tell you,” Joan said, “on behalf of God, that you are the true heir to the throne, and that your mother speaks nothing but lies.”
“And you are nothing but a witch!” Catherine said, standing from her own chair.
“Who are you to speak on behalf of God?”
Joan turned her face to Catherine, and something in it made the older girl take a half step back and sink down into her chair.
“I speak the word of Saint Michael, who deigns to appear to me,” Joan said, holding Catherine’s gaze. “I am a poor and unworthy peasant girl, but I am no witch, nor harlot, nor,” her eyes hardened, “am I a bastard born of cold lust, unloved by my father.”
De Noyes and Charles frowned at this last remark, not knowing the sense of it, but Catherine cowered in her seat, again terrified by the girl.
She is sent by God! Catherine thought. Merciful Jesus, how am I to protect myself against her?
Joan turned her regard back to Charles. “Many will come to la Roche-Guyon to join you,” she said, “but you must not tarry long here. When you have a suitable force behind you, return to the fields outside Paris. There you will meet a man who can aid you.”
“Who?” Charles said.
“His name,” said Joan, “is Philip, and even though he has a serpent’s tongue, you can mold him to your advantage.”
LATER THAT night, when the entire citadel slept save for the guards atop the walls, Catherine sat alone by the window in her chamber, staring at the silvery river winding far below.
She shivered in her thin nightgown, and wrapped her arms about herself.
Joan was dangerous beyond compare … and none had suspected her, nor thought the angels might send one such as her.
She could ruin everything … everything …
Catherine tried to hold back her tears, but such was her despair they escaped anyway.
How could she warn of Joan … how could she warn the man she loved so desperately, and he her?
There was no communication between them. Not now. Not under these circumstances. And, dear Jesus, it might be years before she saw him again.
Catherine did not know how she would survive if her brother fell under the witch’s spell and allowed himself to become God’s instrument on earth.
She did not know how any of them would survive that.
Finally, her despair grew too great to bear quietly, and she leaned against the cold stone of la Roche-Guyon and broke into loud, wracking sobs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Thursday before the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(14th October 1378)
THERE WERE ONLY SO MANY things a man could do to keep himself occupied in a room no larger than the meanest monkish cell—furnished only with a stool and sleeping pallet—and during the past two weeks Thomas had done them all a dozen times each day. He had prayed, meditated, listened, thought and, most of all, angrily paced the confines of the room.
He’d been such a fool! Ever since his experience at the Cleft, Thomas had known there was good reason to be suspicious of Marcel. So what had he done? Walked straight into the man’s den. Now here he was, confined and useless, and the demons
outside in the street could work their will unrestrained.
Perhaps even now they were crawling over de Worde’s casket, trying to find their way in.
Dear God, but he was useless until he could find that casket.
Did the demons mean to keep him here, trapped, until it was time for this “test”
they had taunted him with?
When he wasn’t pacing, Thomas prayed, but he found little relief in prayer. St.
Michael had aided him all he could. It was up to Thomas to act and to find his way, and he knew he couldn’t rely on being saved by the archangel every time he misjudged.
How could he lead the battle to send the demons back to hell if he couldn’t manage to escape a simple prison cell?
Finally, after over two weeks of frustration and self-recrimination, footsteps approached his door, and Thomas heard the bolt being slid back.
He turned to face the door.
There was a murmur of conversation on the other side, then the door swung open.
Marcel entered. His face was drawn and exhausted, the skin a sickly gray, and his clothes were crumpled and stained here and there with the mud of the streets.
Thomas stared boldly, unblinking, not willing to be the first speak.
“Put on your cloak,” Marcel said, “and come.”
Thomas made no move, nor did he shift his regard away from Marcel.
Marcel sighed, almost inaudibly, and his eyes drifted past Thomas and focused on some distant object through the tiny window.
“I would like,” he said, “to speak of who I am.”
Thomas’ eyes narrowed.
Marcel’s gaze refocused on Thomas. “And of what I do. Come. Please.”
Marcel turned and walked out the door. Thomas slung his cloak about his shoulders and followed.
For a long time they did not speak.
THOMAS HAD been kept in a room of the fortified house that Daumier had led him to that night two weeks ago, and now Marcel led him up through a maze of corridors, through the front door, and then into the narrow, twisting street beyond.
There were people about—this was a normal working day—but the mood was grim, almost sullen. There were not the voices and laughter that Thomas normally associated with a busy market and craft city, but only a subdued gloom that emanated from the people moving along the street.
Several greeted Marcel respectfully enough, but Thomas noticed that occasionally a face would turn to the walls, and then the sky, as if the person expected some kind of retribution, whether earthly or heavenly, to fall upon him or her within the next instant.
Suddenly Thomas recognized the atmosphere. It was that of the penitent, crawling helplessly (and hopelessly) toward his confessor.
This city was preparing for death.
“Marcel?” he said, but the provost had walked out onto the street and was now moving westward, and Thomas hurried after him.
They walked swiftly, moving from the narrow, winding streets close to the walls into the wider and straighter main thoroughfares of the city. Here people thronged, making pretense at conducting daily business and trade, but everywhere was the same sense of apprehensive waiting.
“It has all gone wrong for you, hasn’t it?” Thomas said as they eventually swung into the Grande Rue and headed toward the Seine, the hunched gray shape of Notre Dame rising into the gray low-slung clouds ahead.
“Thomas,” Marcel began, his pace slowing amid the commerce and traffic of the Grande Rue, “I have tried my best, but I fear I have failed.”
Thomas said nothing, knowing that Marcel had to unload his conscience without prompting if his repentance was to be a true and honest one.
Marcel nodded and smiled at a carter who greeted him with a wave, then resumed.
“I grew to manhood in this city, and have loved it, and its people, with all my being.”
Thomas nodded, acknowledging Marcel’s beginning. His first mistake. He should have loved God with all his being.
“Paris is a city of light,” Marcel said, slowing a little as he sidestepped a heap of dung piled outside the front door of a stone-fronted house, “its brightness fueled by the honest hearts of its citizens. To them I have devoted my entire life.”
Again Thomas nodded, knowing. It was to God that you should have—
“You tiresome priest,” Marcel said mildly. “I know your thoughts. I am not confessing, only showing you the road ahead.”